


far from here and nowhere else

by altitudehaze



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, anyways off to watch it again, what an arresting experience of soft yearning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27383506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altitudehaze/pseuds/altitudehaze
Summary: The woman's eyes close. The anxiety wavering off her is so tangible and frenetic that Jamie feels as though she's being doused in static just from standing near her.And touching her. Right. Jamie's hand is still on the woman's shoulder.She lets it drop.At this, the woman looks up, and conjures an impressive facsimile of calm. It's not at all convincing, but the effort counts. "I'm -- I'm awfully sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm sorry, I -- I haven't done this since I was a kid.""Trespass?""Sleepwalk."***Late at night, while watching her moonflowers bloom, Jamie runs into a sleepwalker on the grounds at Bly. She drives her home, but a few nights later, it happens again. Which is far from the worst thing in the world.They're not friends, exactly. But they're something.Meanwhile, the gloom of Ms Jessel's departure finally begins to ease as the children start at Bly Elementary, and Flora gets a new teacher who's absolutely definitely perfectly splendid.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 17
Kudos: 97





	far from here and nowhere else

_"[O]ur true nature," he says, "is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing." (130)._

* * *

On the nights that the moonflowers bloom, Jamie goes to bed early. She presses her face into the pillow and wills herself to sleep with the sun still half slumped over the horizon, and almost always, she manages it. She sets her alarm for eleven o'clock, although she invariably wakes up a few minutes before it, just in time to turn it off. Then Jamie pulls her overalls back on, her boots, her jacket, and piles into her jeep, driving to the manor and settling back into her gardens.

And then she sits. She rests her chin in her palm and watches them live their one-night lives. Partly because they're beautiful, and they're so much work, and she's come to let herself be swallowed by that beauty she's worked so hard for. And partly because it feels important; this act of watching. Of making sure that these flowers don't die without ever being seen.

So it's her and the moonflowers and then -- from the other side of the lawn --

Sound: soft, but Jamie knows her plants. She knows how they breathe and move in the stillness and the fog and the wind, and this isn't the restlessness of old willow trees or the chattering of leaves hankering for dawn. 

A moment later, the sound clots and solidfies into a silhouette, a person moving across the grass through the milky mix of light and shadow. They walk slowly but purposefully, as if they're following someone, but nobody else has passed this way.

And okay, it's not technically Jamie's property. She's sure as shit not a security guard and it's not her job to keep the grounds clear. But legal ownership or not, these are her plants. They're under her care. And people who slip through fences at 2a.m. are rarely up to much good; Jamie should know -- she spent the better part of her late teens sneaking into all sorts of places that tried very hard to keep her out. 

Plus, there are kids in the house. Kids, plants. Both important to keep alive, et cetera, no reason to split hairs. 

She didn't bring her shotgun, but she's got her hefty torch, which is old army surplus and a decent makeshift weapon if ever there was one. 

The person doesn't seem to hear Jamie coming, even though she's not exactly making an effort to sneak up on them. It'd be much easier if they realised they'd been spotted and made a break for it, until they were far away and someone else's problem -- the best kind of problem, in Jamie's books. 

"Oi!" Jamie shouts, hoping to spook them. 

No response. 

She flicks on the torch and shines it directly at them. She isn't sure what she expected -- a high schooler with a stash of fireworks and a bad idea? Peter Quint, back to stomp all over their lives again? -- but a bare-foot young woman in loose flannel pyjamas is certainly not it. 

Even from this distance, Jamie can tell that she's -- well -- 

Moonlight is a good colour on some people, is all. 

"Hey," Jamie says, and it's not _soft_ , not at all, but it's certainly less of a shout this time. 

The woman ignores her and keeps walking. 

A keening unease begins to creep in, as though the grounds of Bly Manor have swallowed something that is only just now beginning to kick in. 

"Hey."

Jamie speeds up and moves in front of her, directly into the woman's path, walking backwards to keep pace with her. She shines the torch at the woman's chest, unwilling to jab the light right into her eyes. The glow is enough for Jamie to see her face in detail -- beautiful and blank. So blank that it makes Jamie realise that she's never actually seen a properly blank face before, that there have always been tiny expressions and thoughts tucked away within them like subtext. Except now: the woman's blue eyes are open, but Jamie doesn't feel the slightest bit seen, and she's an expert in knowing when she's being watched. 

The woman is shivering, tiny shakes that had been imperceptible from far away. 

She's not really here. And she's cold.

Something slips in Jamie's chest and she only realises she's decided to reach out when her hand lands on the woman's shoulder. 

"Hey, lady." Jamie jostles her a bit. "Excuse me." 

She catches the exact moment the welling absence in the woman's face shifts away; it's subtle but unmissable if you're waiting for it, like feeling a humid afternoon fatten into an early storm. 

The woman blinks once, twice, and takes such a big breath that Jamie is at once uncertain whether she was even breathing before. 

"Um," the woman murmurs. Her gaze jabbers with confusion, skittering from Jamie to the trees to the grass beneath them. "Um, I --" 

"It's alright," Jamie blurts, suddenly afraid that the woman is going to cry. "It's okay." 

The woman's eyes close. The anxiety wavering off her is so tangible and frenetic that Jamie feels as though she's being doused in static just from standing near her. 

And touching her. Right. Jamie's hand is still on the woman's shoulder.

She lets it drop.

At this, the woman looks up, and conjures an impressive facsimile of calm. It's not at all convincing, but the effort counts. "I'm -- I'm awfully sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm sorry, I -- I haven't done this since I was a kid."

"Trespass?" 

"Sleepwalk." 

Jamie isn't sure what to say next. The night is big and quiet around them. She tries to think of what she'd want to hear, if she'd abruptly woken standing in a field in the middle of the night. "You're at Bly Manor, by the way. If that helps."

"Oh." The woman nods in recognition. Not that that means much -- everyone in the village knows about this place. 

And Jamie knows almost everyone in the village. But not this woman, although she doesn't feel like a stranger, exactly. As if they've never met but have been in all the same places at all the same times, and a rich history of not-meeting hums between them. 

Which is stupid. Jamie has barely left Bly and the village for years, and this woman's accent -- not to mention, like, everything about her -- makes Jamie more than certain they never found themselves in foster homes or prison together. 

"Are you visiting in town?" Jamie asks. 

The woman swallows. "Uh, no. Just moved here, actually. Well, not here. The village, I mean."

The woman tugs at the bottom of her shirt, twisting the fabric tightly and then unravelling it before twisting it again. 

"What's your name?" Jamie asks. "I'm Jamie. I'm the gardener here." 

"Oh, sorry, it's -- I'm Dani."

Dani: American, sleepwalker, prolific apologiser. Amazing how much you can learn about someone in three minutes. 

"You don't have to keep apologising. It's really okay. You're not hurt, are you? The fence is pretty high. How'd you get in here?"

Jamie scans the woman's body. There are a few streaks of mud here and there, and she looks a bit ruffled, but otherwise unharmed.

A miracle, really. 

Jamie's stomach puckers at the looming prospect of what could've happened to her, wandering alone through the dark, the other waiting dangers far more vicious than the lay of the land. 

Thank god that it's Bly Manor she came to and Jamie she found. 

"I don't know. I don't remember." Dani frowns. Jamie can actually _see_ in that tiny wrinkle between her browns how hard she's trying to remember. "Couldn't I have just come through the gate?"

"Ah." The gate is supposed to be locked, but there is a not unreasonable possibility that Jamie left it open when she arrived. "Could've."

"Well, I think I'm fine. Thanks."

Except she's still shivering and whatever it is that makes it impossible for her to walk away from a drooping flower is clamouring in Jamie loudly, pushing in her throat and the tips of her fingers. She shucks her jacket -- it's denim, but lined. More than warm enough. "Here."

"No, I --"

"You look freezing." It's unseasonably chilly for the end of August, even for Bly.

"I --"

"Come on. It's alright, I promise." When Dani hesitates, Jamie adds, "You know, I was raised with manners." Semi-true. Jamie was raised by radio plays and later, the television, and so that counts. "Gotta be accommodating for guests, and whatnot. Trespassing kinda makes you a guest, I reckon."

Dani doesn't quite smile, but she almost does, and the almostness closes around Jamie, swallowing her whole. 

"Thank you," Dani says, perfectly polite, like she's starched her words. Then she pulls the jacket around herself with a quickness that belies how cold she really is, sliding her arms into the sleeves and curling them back around herself, exhaling in relief. 

She looks -- she's --

Before it can finish, Jamie buries that thought like a seed. No, not like a seed -- seeds grow and become larger and steadier and more visible -- 

"You're welcome." 

Jamie becomes abruptly aware of Dani's bare feet and the chill of the damp grass, and how they're in that quagmire of vague and sluggish time between midnight and dawn. The small hours, her dad used to call them. To Jamie, they've always felt like the biggest, the ones with the most room in them; maybe because they're often spent alone, and there's nobody else to use up all the minutes, gobble them down. Just Jamie. Regardless -- not the best time to be out and about.

"Are you a ways from home, then?" Jamie asks. She must be. The manor grounds are hardly bumping up against the village. 

Dani rubs her temple. A headache coming on, maybe. "Not sure? I've never been here before. So, I guess so."

Jamie's moonflowers will be dead soon. 

But there will be more of them tomorrow. 

"I'll give you a lift back to the village." Jamie couches the offer in a shrug, letting it roll off her, casual and easy.

"Oh, no, I couldn't possibly --"

"I'm heading that way anyway." Not a lie. Just nudging up the schedule a bit. 

"At this hour?"

"I don't live here. I just came by to check on some things. Plant things." Jamie clears her throat. "So, I'm going, whether you come along or not."

Dani seems uncertain as to whether Jamie is just humouring her, so Jamie turns and starts walking. It's only a second before she hears Dani move too, hurrying to catch up. 

Jamie takes them a slightly longer route back to the driveway, sticking to the grass, avoiding anywhere with sticks or gravel that might hurt bare feet. They don't talk. Jamie's used to silence lapping her, biting its own tail, but usually the quiet makes other people uncomfortable. Not Dani -- she seems grateful for the lull, for the chance to collect herself again. 

They pile into the jeep. In the rear vision, Jamie can just barely trace the impression of the manor, which protrudes from the earth like a snapped bone. 

As they drive, Jamie risks a few glances over at Dani, who at the very least looks a little warmer. 

"Do you suppose it's the being in a new place that did it?"

"Sorry?"

"You said you haven't sleepwalked since you were a kid. Could it have been the stress of moving that set you off, maybe?"

Dani shrugs. The backwash of the headlights fills the jeep cabin with a dimness that mutes but doesn't hide details; Jamie can make out the tightness of Dani's posture, the way she's biting her lip. 

"I've moved before," Dani says. "I lived in London, for a bit."

"Noisy, there."

"Yeah."

Jamie's pretty good at telling when people don't want to talk, but despite Dani's brief answers, she doesn't radiate a desire to be left alone. More that she isn't sure what to say or how to say it, or like she's closed the shutters on herself and can't find the latch. 

"Well, the village is nice. A bit gossipy, but that's small towns for you."

"I'm from a small town," Dani replies. "I'm familiar." 

Questions, uninvited, take root in Jamie like weeds: Where abouts? Why did you leave? Are you going back? She pulls them up and tosses them aside. These things aren't for her to ask or know. 

Finally, Dani goes, "I took a sleeping pill. That might've -- might've set me off."

The village comes into view, and after a prompt from Jamie, Dani gives her directions back to the bedsit where she's staying -- temporarily, she says, while she sorts something out. It's not far from the pub, not far from where Jamie lives, but that's useless information and she quells her inexplicable desire to point it out. Not the time or place. 

Dani slips the jacket off and sets it on the seat, turning to face Jamie. It's impossible to imagine that blankness from before on Dani's face now: it's a hive of expression, of thought and feeling; she must be exhausted, if it's this loud in her head all the time. 

"Thank you," Dani says. "For waking me up. And bringing me back."

"Not a problem," Jamie assures her. 

After another of those stuttered pauses -- Dani seems to be a morse code string of dots and dashes, courage and hesitation clashing together -- Dani quickly squeezes Jamie's hand. "Really. Thanks."

And then she's out of the car, reduced to a vague silhouette again in only a second. Jamie watches her make her way down the little path to the front door of the bedsit, where she stops.

Jamie could swear a current of realisation runs between them as the same thought occurs at the same moment. 

Jamie rummages in her glove comparment, grabbing a handful of tools, then hops out of the jeep, following Dani to where she's standing, hands on her hips, in front of the door. 

"Didn't think to bring a key, huh?"

"Must've closed behind me." Dani groans. "I don't want to wake them up, the landlord is --" 

"McKinney's a dick." Famously whiskey-washed, bitter and cheap, and misogynistic to boot. "What floor are you on?"

"Second?" 

"Are you not sure?"

"I'm not sure what difference it makes."

"Come with me."  
  
Jamie leads her around the side of the building. She's been by the bedsit before when a friend of Owen's from Paris came to stay. There's a trellis that's steady enough, groping up the side of the building by the bins, and with Jamie's screwdriver and the ancient fixtures -- Mr McKinney hasn't spent a penny on maintainence in nearly a decade, as far as Jamie can tell -- it should be no problem at all. 

"If you're okay climbing the trellis, I can get you back inside."

Dani is either affronted at the idea or affronted that Jamie would consider her unwilling to try. "I'm sure I can manage." 

"Right you are. One sec, and I'll --" She gestures vaguely with the screwdriver towards the upstairs window. 

Dani's eyebrow raises slightly -- amusement or interest or something else, and Jamie thrums with it in the dark. "Do they teach this in gardener school, then?"

"Breaking and entering?" Jamie cracks a grin. "I'm self-taught, actually."

"Me too," Dani replies, holding out her hand. "I can manage it." 

A dart of surprise lodges in Jamie, pleasantly warm. "You sure?"

"I'm sure. Thank you." 

"Why don't you climb and I'll pass it up to you?"

The brunt of the moonlight is blocked by the roof, and she's navigating by shadows, but Dani scales the trellis without issue. Once she's at the window ledge, Jamie stretches, passing over the screwdriver and in less than a minute, Dani's cajoled the latch open. She pulls herself up and safely into the room, disappearing briefly and then leaning back out to drop the screwdriver in the dirt in front of Jamie.

"Thanks again," Dani says. 

Then she smiles -- fast and bright. A fishhook. It curls cleanly through Jamie and tugs gently, and doesn't stop tugging as she picks up her screwdriver and gets back in the jeep and drives the extra three streets to her own flat. It tugs as she changes out of her overalls and buries herself under the covers, tugs right until she falls asleep and still, even then. 

* * *

As a kid, Dani had a lot of dreams. The sleeping kind -- not the actress or astronaut kind. She'd close her eyes and her brain would fizz with images, as though her subconscious was a soda she'd shaken during the day. 

She remembers walking to school with Eddie, regaling him with tales of pink giraffes and endless highways and curious errands she felt compelled to run but never managed, and woke up uncertain of what they might've been. 

Eddie always used to guess. Maybe she'd been supposed to stop a witch from boiling children. Perhaps she'd been tasked with fetching a donut for the president.

"The president probably already has someone to get donuts for him," Dani pointed out. "Surely, if you were the president, you'd have a specific donut-getter."

"I'll be your donut-getter," Eddie promised in return. This was back in the easy days when they loved each other the exact same amount in the exact same way, before it all became another one of those strange, shapeless tasks she found herself waking up in the middle of.

After he dies, her dreams curdle and rot and transform into something new. Cars. Tyres. Fire in glasses. Eddie's blood on her knees, soaking through her clothes, thick on her hands. Hospital sinks. Flickering fluorescents. Crying and screaming as if another round of sobbing might pay her debt and he'll come back, perfect and alive and they can once more be eight years old, everything unwinding into that perfect ease again. 

So, Dani sleeps less and less. Her mother calls it _widow eyes_ , those shadows that hunker above her cheeks. But staying awake makes no difference. Her dreams get ravenous, mauling through her mind and breaking into daylight, jumping out at her from behind corners and slivering from mirrors and windows and walls. 

She leaves America, but he follows her. 

He promised that once: "Dani, I'll follow you anywhere." It was sweet at the time but already heavy, like having a soft, thick blanket laid over her on a hot summer night. 

Soon, she leaves London too. Dani had hoped a city that big might just gobble her whole and spit her out new, but instead it stepped on her and kept moving, leaving her trampled in its wake, too fearful and too alien to find a hold.

She takes a teaching position in a village out in the countryside. Somewhere entirely new and fresh and unlike anywhere that she and Eddie ever went. Maybe she'll manage to give him the slip at the train station or the taxi bank, leaving him to wander the infinite streets in seach of her while she gets further and further away. 

The last thing she does before getting out of the city is visit a doctor and get a prescription for something, anything, that might help her survive the night. She feels like an addict, craving sleep as much as she fears it. 

The first night she's in Bly, she takes the recommended dose. Downs the two pills with a glass of water and lies down on the uncomfortable, sagging mattress in the bedsit, waiting, not quite hopeful. 

They work. 

They work perfectly. For the first time in months and months, she sleeps peacefully. There aren't happy dreams and there aren't sad dreams. Just nothingness. 

And then she's being shaken awake. She opens her eyes and her brain errs against the edge of reality until it settles in: she's in a field. A random field, and it's dark, and there's a woman in front of her (a beautiful woman -- irrelevant) and Dani finds herself apologising, stuttering through a garbled explanation. 

She did sleepwalk, as a child.

She just grew out of it, eventually. 

The woman doesn't seem angry. She's gentle, in an abrupt sort of way -- an odd combination that Dani finds inexplicably soothing, from this stranger who isn't really strange.

 _Jamie_. 

Dani tries to unfeel the feeling that she won't ever forget that name. It's a quiet, determined little nudge from the back of her brain, like a sudden certainty that she's left a tap running or the stove on. But it's pointless and useless and wrong. Silly. She's all addled from getting her first real sleep in forever and from the drugs.

The jacket she's given is warm and comfortable and smells the way the outside smells when you're a kid, before you think of cigarette smoke or petrol or city smells, and it's just a backyard stocked with adventures and swings and hidey holes. Dani sticks her hands in the pockets and feels them slowly start to thaw. 

Jamie offers to drive her back. They barely even talk the whole drive, but somehow, it's as cathartic as rambling out every thought in her head -- 

She buffets this sense away and focuses on the slant of the headlights on the road. 

When they arrive back at the bedsit, Dani has the urge to say or do something, and slaps a thank you over whatever that urge is, stopping it up and shoving it down. 

But then the door's locked. Of course. It must've swung closed behind her, and her sleepwalking self had neglected to bring along her key.

Mr McKinney had been clear: doors were to be open at certain hours only. Waking him up -- which Dani doubts is even possible, given the amount of liquor he downs -- is frowned upon. 

Jamie reappears at her side. Like the opposite of a ghost, Dani thinks, before she wonders why she thinks it. 

There's a trellis and Dani's asking her if she's okay climbing it, as if Dani hasn't climbed about a thousand trees, as a child and later as a teacher, rescuing kites and frisbees and stray second-graders from various heights. The whole thing reminds her of being nine years old and sneaking out and back in on summer nights after going to look for comets with Eddie, and _god_ that makes her miss him --

That, in itself, is refreshing. To just miss him, and not dread him, and not dread the memory of him. 

The dread sets in a beat later, once she's returned the screwdriver and Jamie the beautiful gardener is gone, and the sounds of the jeep's surly engine have abated. 

Eddie. Eddie. Eddie.

Who is dead -- who, if you get down to it, she -- 

She --

Killed. She killed she killed she killed she killed she killed. 

Dani tries to go back to sleep and knows, _knows_ , she won't. 


End file.
